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Careers After Tech?
theinfobox asks: "Is anyone else burned out on tech jobs? Or, has anyone tired of the never ending hunt for tech position? I know a lot of people who have and they are now looking at other career fields. I am almost at that point myself. What career fields are you considering after leaving the tech industry?"
My advice: stay away from retail at all costs. Try something secretarial, in hospitality, or even manual labor. Anything is better than being told all day why your reservations about hard-selling extended warranties are invalid, and that if a product is carried by the company, there can't ever be anything wrong with it, etc. Keep your dignity at all costs.
Oh, and find a job with consistent shifts, if it's hourly. Nothing sucks more than noon one day, 8am the next, 3pm the next. Especially when instead of giving you the schedule the Wednesday before, like you were promised, they decide that Sunday morning is a better time.
I'm optimistic, personally... 23:00-07:00 5 nights a week, with a 2-day break, and no micromanaging bosses.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
For retirement I plan on being a crotchety old geek that teaches mathematics and computer programming in a community college somewhere nice. I figure it would be good to teach night courses since I hate mornings and I would be giving real world experience and direction to kids and young adults who really need it.
If tech doesn't work out in the near term, I'm planning on trying to "retire early" and getting a teaching certificate. Most fun I ever had was teaching a College level Programming class to freshmen. I might not get the college freshmen with a certificate but maybe I could get the High School seniors?
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I agree with some of what you say. I also know many people who jumped into tech just for the cash. I know a few that don't have home computers and many who have only one. Then they come to my house and are bewildered as to why I have 15 computers in my office... and the OSes range from Amiga to Windows XP (yes, including Linux and more).
I thrive on tech. I love it. I always told my friends that were making half as much as me in other jobs that I was just lucky that what I love happened to pay very well.
I will never let tech out of my life. But I am tired of the current environment. I currently have a job which would be great if not for the jerks in management. Before they were bad, but know they think they can demand anything because us techies have no where to go. This is of course in Silicon Valley which has been really hit hard by the dot com bust.
And they are right... I would love to quit and find another job, but the market sucks. Everyone wants the exact requirements of the job to be matched by your resume. I am at the point in my career where I can pick up any piece of software/hardware or whatever and be proficient with it in a couple of days. And of course... Now everyone wants you to have a degree. They don't care that I have been programming and building computers/networks since I was 7 years old(back in 1978).
I thought I could enhance my resume by picking up certifications or completing my degree on line, but that sucks when you work 60-85 hours in a week and then have a family. I was learning at work, but now they seem to find more crap jobs. (Like clean up the IT storage room).
So am I ready to leave tech... NO. But do I feel I might have to... YES. I think of it this way... it will be like a sabbatical. I will get out of the industry during this crap, but still get paid enough to at least put a roof over my kid's head and food on the table.
The problem is I don't know what else to do besides tech. It is all I have ever done and the only thing I really like. I am hoping to come up with another career that I could possible involve computers in. I also thought about trying the consulting business, but that is probably a worse situation than what I am in.
So I go back to my original question... What other careers might be suited to an ex-techie? Any ideas?
Join the military. Not only do you have a stable job, you get to play with some cool ass toys you'll never see in the civilian world. Funding is always there for a lab, and new projects. And best of all you get to travel, and party with a bunch of cool people.
Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY!!!
When you have billions giving away a few million is nothing.
When you have $50 billion (give or take), $100 million is only 0.2 percent of your net worth. It's like a guy who has $1000 giving away $2.
Granted, the Gates Foundation is bigger than that (according to their annual report they gave $1 billion in grants last year) but some of their reporting is misleading - a considerable proportion of their education-based aid is in the form of Microsoft software and/or has other Microsoft-related terms and conditions applied to it.
How much does a copy of Office notionally cost? $800? Well, give away 100,000 copies to education and there's $80 million already. And let's not forget Encarta, etc.
And while $1 billion dollars might sound like a lot, it's probably less than what the foundation earns in annual interest alone.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that the foundation is there and that it's doing something to help fight AIDs, improve literacy, etc, it's just that I don't like their accounting practices - a copy of Office isn't as valuable as a couple of hundred TB vaccinations.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Everyone seems to be saying "good riddance" to the people leaving the tech sector, but what is sad about the recent turn down is even really good people are leaving technical fields. I can think of several people from the two companies that I worked for that closed their doors last year.
One in particular started out as a sys admin for both companies and eventually went on the lead the entire IT departments for them. After the last company shutdown, he had had enough. He just started law school this semester. That is a sad loss to the industry. He was one of the best. In fact, I still call him up for advice when messing around on my home network.
I guess for me, I'm torn. Part of me is jealous and the other part is sad for the loss. I'm jealous because I wish I could simply say goodbye to the godforsaken industry. However, I could never do that because I simply do not know anything else. But, mostly I'm just sad for the loss. I hate to see good people leave.